by John Dall’Aglio | Vol 43 (4) 2025
Summary: The question – and challenge – of localization is central to contemporary neuropsychoanalysis. While meta-psychological mappings of brain areas have been made, critics emphasize the incompatibility of psychodynamics with brain location. Freud himself dealt with the tension between location and function of different systems, not only in his psychoanalytic meta-psychology, but also in his neurological career. Both the 1915 essay ‘The Unconscious’ and the 1891 monograph On Aphasia tarry between localization and function. Close reading of these texts reveals that Freud does not categorically reject localization. He carves a dynamic model that still admits of localization. This paper employs a neuropsychoanalytic dialogue internal to Freud – between 1891 and 1915 – to articulate the key features of Freud’s meta-psychological theory built, in part, upon neuropsychological dynamic localization. Implications for contemporary neuropsychoanalysis will be briefly discussed.
by Gertrudis Van de Vijver | Vol 41 (2) 2023
Summary: This paper articulates the idea that the drive to know is the key to sexuality, and that sexuality is the key to subjectivation. It approaches Lacan’s formulae of sexuation starting from the background of Frege’s distinction between function (predicate) and object (argument) on the one hand, and propositional function and quantifier on the other hand. On this basis, the two sides of the Lacanian formulae are interpreted as ‘the all predicative’, le tout prédicat on the one hand, and the courage of the indecision on the other. That a radically escaping point is not without subjective effect, and does make a difference, epistemologically, ontologically and ethically, is what these formulae are seen to illustrate. Where possible, a comparison is being made with Kant’s transcendental philosophy and logics.
by David Van Bunder | Vol 19 (1/2) 2001
This paper begins by outlining the debate at the beginning of the twentieth century between structuralist and functionalist psychology. We examine some of the consequences of emphasizing either the functional or the structural properties of the mental apparatus. The functional explanation finds its most extreme example in Watson’s behaviorism. Then we examine Freud’s notion of the mental apparatus. We find that in the metapsychology of 1915 Freud gives priority to a structural explanation of mental phenomena, while in the metapsychology of 1923 he constructs the mental apparatus as being divided into functional units.
